16 September 2009
 
Intrepid Nazi Hunters

(A view of the Capital from St. Elizabeth’s Hospital)
 
Maddie was in the right seat of the Bluesmobile and Colonel Mike Grafton was keeping a wary eye out the back.
 
The car bumped over broken concrete by the old Hospital as we went down to the DC Impound Lot, hoping there was a break in the Jersey Barriers on the perimeter road. Satellite imagery is always tantalizing. From above, you an see where things were, but are not now, and I wished there a way I could get real-time updates on the electronic light table on the home computer.
 
What is available for John Q. Public is good enough for mission rehea rsal, but when you have a chance, you need to reconnoiter on the ground. Unless you are dealing with denied areas, of course, and that is why no plan is good enough to survive first contact with the enemy.
 
Cutting across Naval Station Anacostia to get to Bolling Air Force Base caused the white Metro sedan to drop off. I have been seeing a lot of them lately, enough to comment to Maddie at the office.
 
“There is something going on. I feel like I am picking up a tail when I cross into the District. Nothing I can put my finger on exactly, but every time I look up it seems there is a white sedan in the rear-view.”
 
Maddie married a secret squirrel a long time ago, and she is accustomed to how things work in the business. She masquerades as the Operations Officer at the office, effortlessly managing The Lists.
 
I don’t know how women do it. The office generated hundreds of millions of dollars and how it all flows is of great concern to Corporate, who have to report to Shareholders and Meet Expectations. I don’t have many of those, except the vague hope that the paychecks will keep coming and people will stay out of my way. That is the way the Colonel feels to, though he tends to the laconic and when he gets pensive the folding knife he carries inside his belt comes out and he opens and closes it like he is counting the beads on the Rosary.
 
Maddie has the office lists, and the home-front lists of medical appointments and kid support. I could never keep them all straight and do an adequate job at both full-time jobs. But she does. Smartest person there, hands down, and the Colonel would agree, if he bothered to say anything.
 
She was a bombshell before she was a Service wife and now a suburban Mom, so she can also do the Blonde thing when she has to, those lovely curls waving over her shoulders and the big blue eyes sparking. She must have been a pistol when she was a kid, not that she isn’t now. That is an added bonus if you are going to be out hunting Nazis in the poorest part of the District of Columbia.
 
This mission was the final prep before we committed operationally. We looked official as heck. We all had our handful of access badges on our neck leashes. The Colonel had a tie on, and a dark suit over his crisp white shirt. If it was possible for a bureaucrat to look like a fierce bird of pray, that was him.
 
I was in a trademark seersucker suit with a clip-on bow tie from the eBay haberdashery. I call it the small-town Southern lawyer look, circa 1963. That was the year things fell apart, or came off the rails, better said. After that the District began to shrivel up on itself, and only now is it starting to come back. Ward Eight, which we entered once we left Federal property at the Arnold gate of Bolling is only now getting a glimpse of the recovery.
 
It was the forgotten part of the city, another river and a universe away from the stately white marble monuments, even though the Dome of the Capitol looms so close you could reach out and touch it.
 
Malcolm X Avenue spears out of the Base and intersects with Martin Luther King just south of the West campus of St. Elizabeth’s Hospital. It was abandoned years ago by the Feds, and when the Colonel was still on active duty he was accustomed to using the overgrown grounds and collapsing buildings as an improvised training range for his special detachment of Marines.
 
I wheeled the big Crown Vic to the right, gesturing out the window with my cigarette. “It has got to be killing the Feds that they have to deal with M arion Barry again. I can't believe he is still the Councilman from here. New kidney and new corruption and tax evasion charges, too.”
 
“You got that right,” said Maddie. “Homeland Security has got to be holding its nose about spending three billion dollars to locate the headquarters in the middle of Ward Eight.”
 
“Four miles from Congress and the land is available,” said the Colonel from the back seat. “Plus, it is near the Metro Stop on the Green Line. The compound they are using now on Nebraska Avenue is that far from the nearest public transportation.”
 
The little row houses looked sad as we sped down Martin Luther King Jr. to where it turned into South Capitol Street, a detached remnant of L’Enfant’s original grid for the city. I took the spur to the right and passed Hadley Hospital, the last operating health facility in Ward Eight. For years there was not a supermarket here, or a sit-down restaurant.
 
Back on Marin Luther King, I pointed the Buesmobile to where the road dead-ended into the Eagle Point recreation center at Joliet. Three deer stood on the other side of a vast pothole, a doe, a fawn and a buck who looked at us with deep brown eyes and zero curiosity.
 
“Doesn’t look like this end of the park is an optimal line of communication,” grunted the Colonel. “Plus I would want a security detail to stay with the vehicle. Too manpower intensive.”

“We could come at it from the Maryland side,” said Maddie. “It might be more secure to jump off from Oxen Hill Farm.”
 
“Yeah,” said the Colonel. “Coming from the Free State we could carry weapons.”
 
I wheeled the big blue car around, passing the bus stop where a group of people waited with resignation for something to happen and the liquor store where it already was, to the sharp corner at Blue Fields and turned left. There was a white sedan at the bus stop. Not unusual, I suppose, but something to make note of.
 
“Let me show you the hole in the fence,” I said, throwing my cigarette out the window. “Then we can make anotherplan that we won’t have to follow.”
 

Copyright 2009 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com